Tag: workplace

5 Things Young People Need To Be Taught To Prepare Them For The Workplace

1. Responsibility – developing trust with others. Building trust with our colleagues takes time but something all of us, including young people, can do to greatly improve our workplace relationships is hold ourselves accountable for the workload we’ve been assigned, instead of trying to shift it onto others which builds tension over time.

2. Honesty – building relationships on bricks not sand. Lying to our colleagues is the fastest route to corroding relationships that are vital to our success. Honesty is the strong bedrock we build the foundations for all successful relationships on because it ensures they stand the test of time.

IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, YOU PLAN TO FAIL.

3. Empathy & tolerance – accepting and understanding the feelings & beliefs of others. In order to create synergy with our colleagues we must respect their character traits and beliefs. When we judge others for the beliefs they hold we are encouraging conflict, when we accept we are encouraging harmony.

Your freedom stops where the freedom of others begins.

4. Rapport – building relationships that last. The way we speak, the body language we express and the manner in which we conduct ourselves are ways we send messages to our colleagues. In order to build rapport with others we must be mindful of how we carry ourselves and how this affects those around us.

5. Deferred gratification – working for results we can see yet. Everything worth having doesn’t come easy, everything that comes easy isn’t worth having – this is the mindset we must teach young people if they are to achieve their long-term goals. The core values this mindset instills in students are patience, resilience and diligence – add more.

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Teaching these skills will create future generations of productive members of society who are actively contributing to the betterment of our economy.

Are Young People Ready For The Workplace?

Young people are struggling with the currents of life, isn’t it about time we taught them how to swim?

Young people aren’t ready for the workplace.

Instead of treating young people like parrots and teaching them to regurgitate information that Google can now provide for us instantly, we need to teach them how to become productive members of society. Many of us left the education system with basic knowledge in some areas of academics but also with the inability to create workplace relationships with colleagues.

Accountability, honesty, ownership and trust are key attributes that must be instilled in young people during schooling to better prepare them for the real world.

Today more so than ever we’re seeing more job dissatisfaction and this is partly due to the fact that young people are not adequately prepared for what the workplace demands of them. The skills young people are learning in schools are not what businesses need and this is why many students finish school and settle for jobs they aren’t interested in. This can be seen in the job market where there are many job vacancies but also high rates of unemployment, this is because the skills and qualifications businesses need are not matched with what young people learn in schools.

If we continue with the current system of miseducation we are only contributing to our own demise.

The time for entertaining ignorance has passed, with economic downturn on the horizon we must take action now to prevent future financial catastrophes. This begins with educating our young people in the right way. If the bankers who caused the financial crisis in 2008 were educated effectively perhaps the disaster could have been avoided. The power to prevent the next one lays in our young people’s hands, we must educate them on how to use this power.